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Wednesday, February 09, 2022

Watching the Defectives


I can't believe that it's February 2021 already. I have been asleep. 

Never mind that did I ever tell you of my interest in Film Noir? It's a limited thing, very much a monochrome kind of interest, fleeting you might even say. I just drift in and out like a badly written character. Femme fatales are tough to take, bent cops, hard bitten ex-boxers, losers and creeps and somewhere in the mix an honorable if cynical detective. He never thought that it would come to this. The car was unreliable. She was so ... unpredictable. Hide the gun.

There were shadows pasted all across the alley, all across the room. Anytime, day or night, always shadows. Trees and headlights, doors slam and coffee, way too much coffee dished up in that chrome diner with the stale waitress. Why are we stuck in the USA? She ought to get out of town, Mexico maybe. Now the jealous husband has turned up and the jailbird is following him with a case of hard cash. More shadows.

We all need to do the right thing but maybe in the wrong way. Or was it the wrong thing in the right way? The camera seldom lies and the cinema always attracts. The plot is always obvious but you can never predict the twist. In the end you'll feel like you've been through the ringer. You didn't sleep, you drank too much, you lost your job and you didn't get the girl. It's a noir world, not just in France but everywhere.

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